


it's a strange thought

by Princex_N



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Brainweird, Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Mental Health Issues, Schizotypal Ted & Thea, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26738470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Thea has something she needs to talk to Ted about; it hits a little too close to home.
Relationships: Ted "Theodore" Logan & Thea Preston
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	it's a strange thought

"Hey, Uncle Ted," Thea asks, sounding most hesitant in a way Ted doesn't usually hear from her these days. "Can I ask you qui-a couple of questions?" 

"Sure, Little Ted," he says without pause, already trying to guess a bit what she might be wanting to talk about. She and Billie had started high school just earlier this year, so it feels like the options could be quite limitless. He's already sitting down, but he goes ahead and sets the guitar he'd been playing around with to the side because he knows how other people like it when they have your 'full attention'. 

Thea just looks a bit like she's floundering under the attention, hands hovering uncertainly by her shoulders as she paces in tight little circles around the living room carpet. "I don't know if I can explain any of it. I don't know how to make it make sense." 

Ted considers that for a moment, it's not like it's an unfamiliar sentiment to him at all, so he should be able to work something out. "Don't try to make it make sense, then," is what he tells her, shrugging a little. Either he'll be able to figure out what she means, or he won't, but either way getting the words out in a first attempt might help a little anyway. He and Bill used to do it like that sometimes when they were younger. 

Her face twists a little, but she doesn't outright reject the idea, so Ted waits with his hands on his knees and doesn't do something like push her to hurry. It's not like he's really doing anything important, and he knows from conversations with his own dad at her age that it doesn't help any to be rushed ahead. 

"Do you ever get like, like your thoughts got put through a harsh noise filter? You know?" she finally blurts out, hands tangled in the front of her shirt as she stops pacing to look at him head on. 

"Yeah," Ted says, a little confused and trying not to let it show too much. "What about it?" 

She seems like she's just as much at a loss as he is, and Ted doesn't know if that's supposed to be part of the plan or not. "Is that just normal?" she asks, voice cracking a little. "There's no way it can all just be normal." 

Ted thinks about that too, ducking his head a little as he considers it. "Isn't it?" he finally settles on asking, not sure why she would know if he doesn't. He'd been about her age when his head had started doing that, hadn't he? He remembers it being most heinously unsettling, but he'd never really talked about it with other people. It was only a year or so after his mother had left, and his dad hadn't been dealing with that too well, not that he really dealt with any of them well before that either. Someone had to make sure that Deacon was still going to school on time and stuff. There had been no one to ask, really, without revealing too much or being more of an inconvenience than Ted had ever been worth in his life. 

Thea just kind of looks at him helplessly. "Billie says she doesn't know what I mean," she tells him. "She's always gotten - I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't,-" 

Ted watches her struggle to halt the words stumbling out of her mouth, her eyes wide and caught somewhere between panic and frustration, and Ted doesn't quite know how to be on this side of things. It's strange to watch someone else struggle the same way he has. He realizes it's not really easy to translate the experience both ways. 

(But hadn't he wished? Hadn't _he_ wanted to have someone to go to? Someone who actually knew what they were doing? Someone actually willing to help him for once?) 

He opens his arms a little almost without thinking and Thea folds herself inside of the almost without hesitating, crunching herself so small against his chest she almost feels like an elementary schooler again instead of almost sixteen years old. "I think I'm going crazy," she cries against his shoulder, and he can feel that she _is_ crying already too, tears leaking through the fabric of his shirt. He holds her to himself tightly and tries not to panic a bit too. 

(She's just a kid, he thinks, and it's not new information but it feels heavier than it ever really has before somehow. Had he been this small once too? Had he really only been this old when he was alone? He doesn't like to think about it.) 

"You aren't crazy," he tells her firmly, even though he's wondered about himself a good few times over the years, but the word is shaped in her mouth like an insult and he doesn't want that energy anywhere near her. "Maybe it isn't normal. I guess I wouldn't really know, my brain's always been kind of weird. But even if Billie doesn't know what you're talking about this time, I still know, and I'm still here. You don't have to do it all alone." 

"It's like a bunch of music with no beat," Thea says shakily. 

Ted nods. "Static like a broken radio," he agrees, and there's a kind of sad relief in how she nods against his shoulder. Sad that she knows, but relief because at least Ted already knows too. "Real music helps," he tells her, just in case she hasn't tried or noticed for herself. It feels like that's something that had taken him way too long to learn for himself. 

"It doesn't - I can't, I keep getting nervous," she says. "And I know it doesn't make sense,and it sounds so stupid, but I keep worrying anyway, and I can't tell anyone or else I'll, they'll..." 

She cuts herself off before she can finish the thought, but Ted can feel the rigid tension of her muscles, the way she has handfuls of his shirt locked into a nervous iron grip, and he wishes she didn't have to face any of this herself. He wishes he wasn't pretty sure exactly how the thought would have ended; wishes she'd never had the thought in the first place. 

But Ted tucks that grief-ache into one of the boxes in his head, pushing back the emotion until it's no longer clamping a vice around his throat, until the thoughts in his head are removed from himself in all the ways its better for them to be right now. 

"There is nothing, you can say, _no way_ ," he tells her, voice only a little rough, "that would ever ruin anything. Nothing that would make me, or Bill, or the princesses, or Billie, _ever_ not want you around." He feels more than hears the little disbelieving scoff she makes at the words. "And if your brain won't let you believe all that, then just let it believe me, alright? Because I've gotten it so far, haven't I? If you're like me, how could I hate you for it?" 

"I'll sound crazy," Thea argues, voice strangled, and it hurts Ted to hear in all the worst ways. "And I'll get sent to some crazy house, like the guy with the little stuffed dog Grandpa Logan talks about sometimes. And I'll be stuck there forever and you'll all hate me and and I-," 

"Thea," he interrupts, and his voice rasps in his throat when he says it and he tries to hold her impossibly tighter. It hurts to hear her sound so scared (aches to hear the fears spoken out of someone else's mouth). " _No one_ is going to lock you anywhere, and no one is going to hate you." 

Something threatens to strangle Ted cold, and he swallows it back as desperately as he can. "Aw, Little Ted, I'd hoped you'd never get more of me than my name, but _trust me_ , okay? You're not any crazier than I am, and even if you were, we would still love you. Maybe your brain's a little busted like mine is, but that doesn't make you crazy. It doesn't make you _bad_." 

She cries a little harder at that, and Ted really hopes he's helping more than hurting with all this shit he's saying. He doesn't think he's ever been very good at really talking to other people, especially not to try to comfort them, but this all feels a little too close. Like he's saying all the things he'd needed someone to say to him all those years ago, all the things he never got to hear because no one was paying attention, because he was old enough to take care of himself.

(But Thea doesn't feel old enough to take care of herself, and the thought strikes like an old wound and Ted shies away from the ache of its implication.) 

"You might be different, and it might be scary, and confusing, but you're not alone, alright? Because I am totally here for you, and you know that Bill and I have known each other for forever, and he hasn't left me, right? And your dad totally loves you _way_ more than me." 

It makes her laugh a little, and Ted tries to count it as a small victory, the wet ache of the sound notwithstanding. "No way," she argues, but it hits like a joke instead of real denial. "You're totally dad's favorite." 

"He's always helped me out," he tells her. "He's always done all the interviews and stuff because he knows the cameras make me too nervous to want to answer any questions." 

"I keep hating going by the garage," she says, taking the statement like the offer that it was. "It feels like something's _totally_ recording me the whole time, even though I know you guys don't use that stuff for anything but music." 

"We can move it all somewhere else," Ted suggests, "or maybe just try unplugging it or something - we don't use it all that often until we actually have a whole song together. Even if that doesn't help then we can figure something else out. And hey," he says, finally nudging her back and craning his own neck a little until he can look her in the face properly. "Even if we don't, even if you're always kind of nervous, you're gonna be okay, okay? You're always gonna have someone to help you too, and you're going to be alright." 

"Promise?" she asks, and Ted knows that maybe technically he can't, but that's not going to stop him. 

"Of _course_ , little dude," he says. "Cross my heart and everything." 

They sit in the quiet and Ted doesn't push her. He wishes there was more that he could say to her, wish he had advice that wasn't just sitting and living through it as best as you can. Parenting's one of those things Ted's never been sure if he's been good at, but this feels like something he should have _expertise_ in. He's lived like this for practically his whole life, and he feels like he hardly has anything useful to give her at all. 

"Don't tell my dad yet?" she asks him finally, leaning back and wiping her face with the back of her hand. Ted grimaces a little, because hiding things from Bill has never been his strong suit and he likes the idea of hiding something about Thea from him even less. "I'm _gonna_ tell him, I will," she assures, "I just, want to do it myself." 

If Ted had said something like that when he was her age, he would have most certainly been lying. Almost nothing would have convince him to tell his father jack shit, but Thea and Bill aren't Ted and his dad and there's almost nothing that Ted is more grateful for. "Okay," he decides. "But if you want help, with that or with _anything_ , you can ask me, okay? Whenever you need to, even if I don't really know what I'm doing then I'll listen and try to help, okay?" 

She nods, and Ted really hopes she's telling the truth. He really hopes she knows he means it. 

* * *

(Ted doesn't want to think about it, really. Doesn't want to spend more time on this than he absolutely has to, but the thought refuses to leave his head, spinning in nauseating repeat right at the forefront of his brain. Practically whispering taunts against the sides of his brain. _She's just a kid._ Which, logically, has to mean - 

_You were also a kid_. 

But Ted wasn't, not really. Right? He couldn't have been, not _really_. He doesn't even want to think it, mentally shying away from the thought even as his brain shoves it back towards him twice as hard. No one cared much about Ted, not enough to look at him twice when he'd started stuttering, when he'd stopped really talking to anyone but Bill, when he would pick apart his skin until it bled. It was never more than something annoying, something other people had to deal with. Ted was already 'stupid' enough, now people had to take even longer to understand what he was trying to say. He was already different enough, now he was just strange enough to be a real annoyance. 

But Ted was always fine. He always had to be, because it was never worth getting into fights and arguments, not when his dad was already busy enough with his shit work and stressed enough about their mom's sudden departure and not when Deacon was only smaller than he was. It was never worth the risk of revealing something _too much_ , the final last straw before they'd all give up on him entirely and send him off as a failure and disappointment to some hospital or military school or whatever the threat of the week was back then. There had been some things that Ted had eventually been willing to push back against his dad for, Bill and the band and their apartment together, but this had never even begun to join the ranks. 

Bill was the only one Ted talked to because Bill was the only one Ted really trusted, and wasn't he just a kid too? Just as forgotten and shunned and scoffed at? 

Weren't they both just _kids_?) 

* * *

Ted wakes up to the feeling of someone tapping him hesitantly on the shoulder with the ease of someone still long used to sleeping in the back of vans even after all the years since he actually has. "Yeah?" he grunts, rubbing some of the grit out of his eyes and turning to see who it might be. 

Ted has never thought that Thea looked like anyone besides her dad, but squinting to see her in the dim light of the hallway bleeding into his room, all he can see is himself the way Bill must have used to see him - sweaty and frantic and panting from the effort of sprinting alone to his window like hell was on his heels the whole way there. 

(And god, _was_ it fair to either of them? That Ted had only another kid to help him? That another kid got stuck trying to help Ted too?) 

"Can can can I sleep here tonight?" Thea asks, casting a furtive glance back towards the door like she's already anticipating he'll say no, and she'll have to go back and face whatever's out there all alone. 

"Of course," he says, because there is no other answer to that question, already pulling back the covers and sitting up to give her the space to crawl behind him and duck between him and Elizabeth (who, if she wakes up at all, stays quiet and doesn't ask why Thea came to them instead of her primary parents) the way they would when they were kids. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, pulling the covers back over them both as he lies back down. 

She shakes her head. "I know it's not real, not really watching, I just want to forget about it," she tells him, and he nods along knowingly. 

"If you can't sleep let me know," he tells her, not sure if his brain will let him actually fall asleep before her but not willing to let it go unsaid just in case. "We can head to the living room and watch a movie or something until it gets brighter." 

"Legally Blonde?" she checks, managing an actual grin, and Ted tries to air guitar as gently as possible to avoid jostling the bed too hard. She muffles her laugh against her hands, tension sliding away like magic. "Thanks, Dad Ted." 

The old nickname makes him grin back, "No problem at all, Little Ted," he says, and once again hopes she knows he means it with his whole heart.

(And if she doesn't, then he'll just have to tell her, spell it all out for her himself, in all the ways no one but Bill ever did for him. He never wants her to wear his shoes for even a minute, even if that means finally acknowledging how heinous it was that he'd had to wear them at all in the first place. Even then.) 

**Author's Note:**

> i could be wrong, but i feel like 'both families live in the same 3/4 bedroom house' was a safe bet to make lol; these past couple fics have focused on the kids a bit so i've gone alongside canon but i'll probably wind up writing one that teases apart some of the grown-up's relationships here soon too


End file.
